Defend history from religion.
- Thu Apr 12 2007
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Imagine a world where historical facts weren’t taught because they might offend someone. The quote “those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it” disappears, as you cannot learn what you are not taught. Learning from the mistakes of the past becomes history, and the mistakes, injustices, and genocides of previous generations are repeated.
Fiction?
Nope, fact. Some teachers in the UK won’t be teaching about the Holocaust because it may offend Muslim students.
This is, in a word, horseshit. You can deny the Holocaust all you want, but you’d be patently wrong. Go right ahead and believe that the Holocaust didn’t happen, but the truth is it did. Get your religious beliefs out of fact-based classes. Believe it all you want at home, but keep it out of history classes.
Excellent rants against this behaviour can be found at Mike’s Weekly Skeptic Rant and Pharyngula.
Like Mike says:
People are free to believe any retarded, helmet-headed, drool-inducing, third chromosome ideas they want to, but don’t even think about including them in schools or deleting solid history or science because it conflicts with the shit you just made up.
5 Responses to “Defend history from religion.”
Thu Apr 12 2007
4:25 pm
I think they got the headline slightly mixed up, but thats the Daily Mail for you.
Teachers are reluctant to teach about the crusades for fear of offending Muslims, and that sort of makes sense, but they fear that teaching about the Holocaust might resort to anti-semitic outbursts from Muslim students. I’m not sure Holocaust denial really enters into it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6517359.stm
Fri Apr 13 2007
8:34 am
Isn’t that somehow -worse- even? I mean, ok, to fear teaching something because you could offend someone is bad enough. But to fear teaching something because that might inspire someone -else- to consider offending someone is like another level of abstraction away.
We are truly doomed, aren’t we?
Fri Apr 13 2007
9:25 am
The funny thing is that all the political correctness towards Muslims in British schools rarely comes from Muslims themselves.
Although anti-semitism is not new in the Muslim world, Holocaust denial is, within the last few years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_antisemitism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial#In_the_Muslim_world
As for the crusades and slavery, what they need is a way to teach these subjects in a fair and objective way. As they say those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it.
Fri Apr 13 2007
9:46 am
I must add, none of the Muslims I know in the UK have ever made anti-semitic statements in my company, and have never struck me as people who would. None of them have ever denied the Holocaust, probably because they learned about it in school, the same way I did.
Germany is fairly easy to reach from the UK, I certainly know that school trips to Germany can often include a visit to Auschwitz, it is apparently, as you might imagine, a very chilling place to visit.
Thu Apr 19 2007
12:03 pm
From Aunty …
“the government has reaffirmed that in England, teaching children about the Holocaust is compulsory, and it is not banned elsewhere in the UK”
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